Archive for March 2005

Another man is dead because of a couple of habitual car thieves. When do you suppose, will the politicians in power in Ottawa finally understand that something needs to be done?

How many innocent people need to die before the lib-left finally figure out that habitual criminals need to be jailed not coddled.

If the tragedy at Mayerthorp wasn’t the impetus for change, what pray tell me, will be? But the outrage after that seems to have died down and like the story out of Richmond, BC today shows, more people are dying at the hands of people the justice system could have, and should have, dealt with.

I’m a little puzzled by these incessant demands for a public inquiry in the Air India case.

Are they hoping to find out who did it? Trust me, Malik and Bagri are intrinsically involved in the conspiracy in my opinion even if the courts ruled the Crown did not prove its case. It’s a far cry from being adjudicated “innocent.” In Scotland there is a third verdict available called “Not Proven.” That might have been a far better verdict in this case.

What else might they learn? That CSIS and the RCMP didn’t speak to each other? Wasn’t that the very reason for the creation of CSIS? Because the MacDonald Commission decided the Mounties handling federal law enforcement and national security was a clash of interests.

Everyone’s so concerned about the destroyed wiretaps. They should perhaps have a look at the legislation governing CSIS. The agency took the action the law requires of them. So what else is there? What other reasons are there to waste $20, $30 or 40 million?

Certainly, there are none that I can think of. Any suggestion by some of the members of the Indo Canadian community that the result might have been different had the majority of people in the plane been white is ludicrous in the extreme. Especially when the purveyors of that argument throw in the “R” word.

If anything, some credence might be given to he argument but only because another community likely would have cooperated more fully with the investigators than the Sikh community did in the months and years immediately following the terror attack on Flight 182.

The RCMP did what they could in all of this. The Crown did their best given the limitations of an uncooperative community. And, the right people were in the dock. One wonders what might be learned by calling an expensive and redundant public inquiry.

Since the tragic shootings in Mayerthorpe, the country has been paying some attention to the sad state of our justice system. It won’t last unfortunately, but for the moment at least Canadians appear to be opening their eyes to some of the issues at any rate.

The story on the front page of PTC about the criminal history of James Roszko is truly a sad condemnation of our criminal justice system. Unfortunately, that story is not all that unique.

A regular reader, CJ, who is a police officer and can’t post under his real name as a result, wrote a piece this week about an alternative to the usual methods of crime prevention. It’s called Incarceration. It’s available on the Contributing Writers page of PTC and I’d suggest you give it a read.

While a bit extreme in that you simply cannot and should not jail everyone, the concept of incarceration is simply no longer applicable in this country no matter how many times the young offender comes to the attention of the police. It’s been said the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) really stands for You Can’t Jail Adolescents. It would be funny were in not so horribly accurate.

The real problem in this country is one of accountbility. Years of successive “soft on crime” liberal governments have given the criminal classes, who start their activities as teenagers, absolutely no reason to change their behaviours. Simply put, there are no consequences for criminal behaviour and therefore no reason to correct or change that behaviour. Look at the mental meanderings of that goofy spokesman for the Border Services Agency in the story on the front page today. What absolute nonsense yet it is raised up the flagpole for the moronic media to salute.

I was speaking to a couple of Vancouver Police officers involved in policing the Skids the other day. The situation with the Honduran crack dealers is a terrific example of what is wrong with our justice system. The VPD refer to their efforts as the policing version of the game “Whack a Mole.” Again, it would be funny were it not so true.

I have decided on this Good Friday, to post a Blog for a little back and forth on some of the issues that plague our country, our justice system and our police officers.

I will continue to write more formal columns, but I was thinking this format would allow some of you who vent away in emails, to be able to share some of your thoughts with other regular visitors to Prime Time Crime.